Work Text:
17.
Her hair is the color of wheat on a sunny day. When she sits in the parlor, she melts into the golden furniture, when she takes off her leather black boots, 6 unnecessary cross stitches and dusty skid marks, she reveals the most delicate ankle, the curve of her underfoot is so precise Marianne could ache. She leans back, uncomfortable and yet at home, her lips are a dusty rose colour, her collar bone made of jasmines. She is one-third flower, two-thirds thorne, Marianne thinks and Catherine whispers, (teasing? unsure? vindictive? Marianne would give anything to tell), "this?"
A single strand of her sunflower hair twirls above the meandering curve of her bosom.
Marianne nods, looks quickly to her canvas, an exhale, "that."
20.
She is stricter than Marianne would like. From her mouth spills forth firm commands, scolds when they are not met. All the story books, the paintings are pushed back in favour of geography, mathematics, Latin. She says, reminds Marianne coolly, that the education of a man is so very different. This, predictably, becomes a reason for harsh exasperated words of when I was a child, I received an education with that and more, children have to practice creativity, and Marianne soon learns that as an only child she's not knowledgeable in the art of discussions.
(They settle on a four to one ratio. Marianne doubts that Catherine actually follows it.)
Vegetables before dessert, and dessert transforms from cake and biscuits and honey tea into sweet fruits. She is far too forth-right, too arrogant, the servants begin to whisper. 5 hours of reading a day, at least, she stands next to them, a rigid gargoyle, an old testament god with absolute judgement, almost.
"Do you disagree with my methods, Madame Bonnefoy?"
Marianne feels herself swallowing words for the first time in a while.
19.
She plays the piano without leave. The music room has not been touched since her husband died and Catherine's fingers inadvertently dust off the ivory keys, sweep off all the memories with the pads of her fingers. From her, springs forth the lightest music, as soft as a butterfly's wing and twice as beautiful. Slow, long and mournful, like a prayer, almost. You could catch a butterfly in a gossamer net, pin it's dead body to a cork board, keep its flamboyance on exhibit, in its grave. Catherine's music is fleeting, rare and stolen.
Marianne sits on the carpet outside the room, rests her head against the wall. She listens. It is grief made corporal.
18.
She is generous with her stories, all except her own. She spins tales to the children, sitting on the wet grass on spring days, blooming forth images of King Henry, Anne Boleyn, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, all the tragic lovers and tyrant kings and she colours them in.
Eventually, Marianne migrates from the porch to catch these excerpts. It will become routine, soon, her and Matthew and Alfred, orbiting Catherine to eagerly grasp this tale, or that, Aristotle and his hare to Camelot.
Catherine grasps strands of green in her fingers. She lifts them and they drift off in the wind as she speaks, carried away by the voice.
15.
"How did you learn to play music so well? I don't expect you had the money to afford such a brilliant tutor."
Catherine does not glance up, her fingers are more machine than flesh and blood and tissue, and she is nothing if not meticulous in her work (another adoring detail to catalogue), "What if I told you my father used to be a travelling musician?"
Marianne purses her lips, "I thought your parents were dead."
"They were, but this suits the narrative so much better don't you think?" Catherine stops playing, ends this session by pressing the wrong key. The ill-advised note hangs in the air, rancid.
14.
Certain stories become private. Whispers behind closed doors. Marianne giggles as Catherine blows out the candle. Their have taken off their boots.
10.
When Catherine's visitor arrives, he hands Marianne a fake smile and platitudes. Something about his mouth makes her blood run cold, and Catherine, as seen on her face, even colder. Her ink stained fingers curl up into a shaking fist. They speak lowly, in a language Marianne can not understand and there is gasoline in her, now. Guinevere, not Catherine, his cold voice does not call her by Catherine.
This is Marianne's house, her wealth, her power and she will not have skeleton secrets in her manor.
"Who is he?" her voice is short of a hiss, she feels like a jilted woman, gathering pieces of a tattered heart and trying to keep it from bleeding out. The truth would be the only bandage.
Catherine smiles, as grim as death, "This is not your story to know."
12.
Marianne gathers Catherine in her arms like a bouquet of wild flowers, kisses the salty, bare skin of her shoulder, "you do not tell me anything."
The bed sheets winds around them like a chain, Catherine writes her signature on Marianne's skin with a sigh, "neither do you. That is how adults work. We exist no where but the present. Or we try to, at least."
Marianne will not be swept away by the ocean of her pretty words again, she is insistent, pulling her closer, looks her in the eye. After what they have done, they are nothing but bare bones to each other, "What would you like to know?"
"What did your husband do?" If a knife sharp enough cuts without pain, you do not realize you have a gaping wound until you are bleeding out, "to leave you so broken?"
9.
"What is your name?"
"Catherine, as I told you."
"That's not what he called you. I'm not stupid. And I would appreciate if you realised that."
Her voice becomes a hiss again, "then what is it, if you're so clever?" Marianne doesn't respond. "My lady would do well to not interfere with matters below her station."
"I have a right to know about the people in my employment."
"And I have a right to be trusted."
5.
They begin selling jewelry and antique paintings. Catherine has made me realise that this house would not suffer from a little modesty. The house becomes a little empty but in the pleasant way that makes Marianne feel free, ready to spread her wings and take off. The children now eat candy more often. It will be one more month.
7.
"Do you know what happens to Guinevere in the stories?" Catherine whispers one night when they both know the other is awake. The bed, warm with their bodies and filled with unnecessary space, is a ship. Neither of them will exit into the cold water. "Everyone knows about Arthur, Lancelot. Even Morganna. But all Guinevere is is the foul catalyst, the stone in the shoe, the weak woman, the one who starts the war. Not that she is alone. She’s the Helen of troy. She’s the desire, the sex, the pinnacle of every womanly vanity. Except Guinevere is worse, isn’t she? Because all she does is cry and beg. And her husband is a just and kind man and she should be grateful that she didn't end up with worse."
Marianne silently wraps an arm around her, making Catherine pause for a split second, almost startled.
"At least Helen gets away. Even if it’s for a moment. Guinevere? Her history is just a blank page after the betrayal, after she starts a man-only war with man-only glory. I don't want to be a Guinevere."
"Then who do you want to be?"
"A myth. An immortal. A ghost, a mystery, a mad woman who still had everyone in her control at all times. Catherine. She gets a story; she gets betrayal and death but she also has a story, a goal, she is hardy and free and desired and will be forever. Even from her grave, she bends people her way. She's the reason the story is told at all. She and Heathcliff and their macabre romance, revenge– Guinevere. Camelot isn't about Guinevere. It will never be. She's barely her own person."
"But who was the man? Why are you scared of him? What was in his letter, why did you burn it, why… why don't you trust me?"
"Because this is not your story. It's mine."
13.
"Who have you been with before?" Questions repeated so often that they become routine. Marianne strokes her hair, combing through it with her fingers, Catherine is a mermaid.
The story parts there. When Cathy is in a good temper, when they read Anna Karenina right before and were a quarter, half, almost done, she’ll respond sweetly, as they lay entangled, "why would I even think about them when I have you in my arms." She will make Marianne smile and drift off to sleep.
And when she’s not in a good temper. Silence. She could be a siren too.
8.
"My mother died the day of my birth." The quiche is baking, Catherine opens a window to release the warmth into the night sky. "We don't celebrate my birthday, never have, but we also don't mourn her death. It cancels each other out. I never went away from home. Teachers came to me. Tailors came to me. Even playmates and my husband to be came to me, like I was some paper doll. I am… new to this."
"To what?"
"To having someone, to love, to be loved. To not lose people. My father died on my first wedding anniversary and my husband was found dead on my second, drunk and naked in an other woman's bed. It wasn't even that he loved her or wanted to run away with her. I am learning to trust."
11.
The painting shows a lush riverbank with dangling branches and blossoms, a glowing sky. Two women in a bare embrace, a hand on a thigh, not facing the intruding observed, lost in each other. When asked what it represents, Marianne without hesitation explains, "Athene and Aphrodite." She does not tell that they are one person with hair the colour of wheat.
6.
"I need your help."
Marianne does not ask for an explanation. "And you will receive it."
2.
This is not your story to know.
16.
"I never liked books, you know," she she paints now. Charcoal line after charcoal line, she can not capture Catherine in canvas and it is both frustrating and enthralling. Marianne palms her indian rubber once again.
"You must not have had a good enough teacher. It is never too late to learn, you know."
"Maybe you may give me private lessons then."
Catherine is the one caught off guard this once, she looks away, at something Marriane can not place, eyes full of an unknown message. Quickly, she draws a curved line, the altar is at her hips.
"I may," Catherine agrees, quietly.
3.
The wheat is the colour of Catherine's hair; as is the sun, as are the leaves on the trees surrounding their home. To the villagers, they are sisters, or a widow and the husband's sister, or something equally noble. They sneak kisses in the water of the lake; in the tall grass, their movements scaring away a handful of bugs or birds; hand on thigh, hand in hair, hand on hand. Matthew calls, shrieks, and Alfred catches him, and they laugh for what feels like forever. It is forever.
The wind says, now.
The wind says, I will keep whispering comfort as you rest next to me, I will stroke your hair and tickle your arms.
And the wind says, I will tell you.
4.
A fire spreads from the kitchen to the living room, to the entrance hall, to the rooms of the widow, governess and the two children. It devours the wood and wool, the silk, and it leaves behind ashes and a puzzled group of people who could have been there but weren't. The funeral is small and quiet. There isn't a lot to say.
Except that a family of four is sleeping at a barely furnished farmhouse several, several towns away from their graves.
1.